14. Chapter 14
Michaela
I tightened my grip on my mug but waited for an explanation. “What do you mean, once? You mean here? Because, yes, obviously, that would change my answer—”
“No,” he cut me off, voice nervous, “in America.” Fitz cleared his throat. “About two months before I was supposed to leave. I uh… realized… I’d taken a fancy to you and I um… meant to do something about it.”
I narrowed my eyes, like it would help me see through any lies. “You never said anything to me…”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.” His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he gently shook his head, obviously lost in the memory. “It was spring, and there was that dance, um, the formal. I had planned to ask you to go with me. I suppose I thought it might change things for us, put us in a new light and, I dunno, I always liked your dresses.” Fitz ducked his head, magically transformed into a bumbling teenager again. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. It was ages ago.”
Sweeping it under the rug wasn’t an option at this point. “Wait. I still don’t understand. You never asked me to the dance. The only time I saw you with flowers was when you asked Halley Marsh to the…” My mouth dropped open as the pieces fell into place. That was the year that my crush, Tanner Bates, asked me to the dance out of nowhere. He took a knee outside homeroom, asked me in front of everyone, and kissed me square on the lips when I said yes. I could still feel the excitement in my chest knowing that he was into me too. Then I turned and saw Fitz with a bouquet of roses…
“Those were for me?” My tiny voice barely carried. “You wanted to ask me ?”
“Yeah,” Fitz clipped the word short and looked away. “But the way you were smiling, and knowing how much you liked him, I mean, it was my fault anyway.”
“Hold on.” I leaned forward. “Start at the beginning because I feel like I’m missing something.”
Fitz groaned like I was interrogating him. Maybe I was, but I had to know. He crawled the short distance to the trunk of the tree and flopped against it. Eyebrows elevated, he motioned with his fingers for me to follow. I tilted an eyebrow, as if to let him know that I would only give in if he was planning to make this story time. His face caved in frustration, my silent cue that I was about to get my way. I covered the distance and curled up under his arm. Fitz brought both of us forward as he stretched to grab one of the quilts. Within seconds, he unfurled it over us and tucked it around me, snuggling me in tight. With warmth fuzzing over my whole frame and his head leaning against mine, I almost forgot about his story.
Thankfully, he didn’t.
“It was locker talk. Nothing crass, mind you. But I knew how much you were infatuated with Tanner, and I thought perhaps I could help him see you the way I did. They all knew we were friends and I told him all your best qualities and how much you’d changed my life.” He pressed a kiss against the top of my head and lingered as if lost in the memory. “Somewhere along my convincing, I suppose I convinced myself. Tanner claimed he was asking someone else, so I thought I was in the clear. You teased me about those flowers most of the day and I couldn’t get the brass to speak up, until I finally did, but…”
His regret hung off the little puffs of vapors that clouded in front of us. I had no idea he’d ever felt any of it.
“You looked at me and I couldn’t let you know, so I slapped that bouquet into Halley’s arms and pretended she was the plan all along.” Fitz tightened his arm around me. “For the record, you were beautiful in that dress. You took my breath away. Every time he touched you, I couldn’t help but get rather jealous. I spent the evening wishing I was standing in his place.”
I shook my head, still not understanding. “I never went out with Tanner again though. You could have put the moves on me after the dance, but you never—”
“I saw how it ended,” Fitz cut me off. “One night on his arm and you were over him. I’d listened to you fawn on and on about him for almost an entire year, and one date with him cured you of ever wanting to spend another second in his presence.” Fitz’s finger hooked under my chin to urge me to look at him. “I couldn’t let the same happen to us. You meant too much to me.”
He wasn’t wrong. Tanner was a jerk most of the night. He talked about football, burped the alphabet, and grabbed my butt when we were slow dancing. I saw him for who he really was and when he asked me out again, I made sure I was always busy.
“But it could have been different with us. What if we—”
His lips pressed against mine, cutting off the words before I could speak. He pulled away only a second later, gaze taking me in like fine art, eyes full of wonder. “If that sacrifice brought us to this moment, then it was worth the wait.”
I drew closer to his warmth, cuddled in close, feeling so small and yet protected in his arms. “How is this any different though? Why are you willing to risk it now?”
A smile slipped across his features like a sigh of relief. “Because missing out on the love of my life is a fate I simply cannot bear.”
My brow rushed inward, trying to understand him better. “The love of your life?” Was he saying…
“I love you, Michaela.” His warm fingers trailed over my cheek. “I have fought it as hard as I could, and yet it remains true. I love you deeply and undeniably.” Fitz pressed a kiss to my lips. “Desperately even.”
Time stilled in that moment. My heart knew the pain that could wait on the other side of his confession, understanding that we could never be together, and yet, I couldn’t help but hold my breath and make this perfect sliver of time last as long as it could. “I love you , Fitz.” Emotion rose in my throat. “Leonidas. My prince.”
As quickly as the moment descended, reality dispelled it again. I watched the pain enter his eyes and I felt sure that he had landed on the same awful truth that I had.
It didn’t matter how much we loved each other. He couldn’t be two people at once. Fitz had to choose.
It was either me or his kingdom, and I refused to be the one to doom an entire nation because of my selfish desires.
“I would be ready, you know?” He blinked away the faintest glistening of tears in his eyes. “In the coming years, like we’d planned.”
He spoke like I was supposed to understand him, but I didn’t follow his reference. “What do you mean? We never—”
“My father,” Fitz corrected, “before he became sick. We had a plan set in place. A smooth transition. I was to take over completely in ten years, and by then, I would be ready.”
My heart ached for the words he wasn’t saying. It was another lament for more time. But with the ball less than a day away, we didn’t have that luxury.
Fitz took my hand in his. “If we had more time, it would all be different.”
“I know, and I understand what you have to do.” His reasoning for this date became all too clear. Fitz wanted to say goodbye. One last moment together before he chose Sadie tomorrow. “I won’t hold it against you, I promise.”
But instead of relief, his expression collapsed into confusion. “You don’t understand.” Fitz shifted from my side and knelt facing me. “I refuse to lose you.” Taking both of my hands in his, he exhaled slowly. “I have a plan.”
I eyed him, unsure of what he meant. “What do you mean you have a plan? Are you overthrowing your own government or something?”
“If I thought it would help, I would consider it.” He shook his head and leaned closer. “The way I see it, my parents, the government leaders, they all want me to take the throne. The idea of pushing it down the line to my uncle or Bishop or beyond the Fitzborough line to my distant cousins is positively abhorrent to them, which tells me I should capitalize on it.”
“And here I thought you were just going to suggest we run away or something.” I tried to make it a joke, but it fell flat.
“That was my first plan, but during the interviews, I started thinking about how all of this revolved around making me happy, or at least as happy as I could be in the circumstances. After all, the original plan was to force me to marry Esmerey, at least until I threatened to abdicate. It was only in her hopelessness that my mother suggested this competition.” His thumbs rubbed over the back of my hands. “I plan to force their hand again.”
“By doing what?” I still wasn’t following him, and the crazed look in his eye wasn’t helping things.
Fitz swallowed hard, as if he were gathering all of his strength to say the words. “By choosing you.” He waited for me to process what he’d said. “If they want me to be king, they’ll either accept you or I’ll step aside for Bishop to take the throne.”
I stared. What more could I do? Was he really willing to risk his entire future for me? For the risk that would be to our relationship? It was crazy. Wasn’t it? This wasn’t like choosing to move to a new job or a different city. This was giving up his birthright. People weren’t willing to sacrifice these kinds of things to get a new girlfriend.
My thoughts hitched on that thought.
No girlfriend.
Wife.
As if sensing that I had finally arrived at the same destination of thought, Fitz shifted to kneel on one knee. “Michaela, I have loved you since I knew what love was. My heart has been yours from the first moment you smiled at me. I have sought you out even when I didn’t know what it was I had been searching for. You make me a fool willing to do anything to have you, and I would be a fool all over again to ever let you go.” His grip on my hands tightened. “Do me the honor, pay me the privilege, that is, grant me my fondest wish, and say that you’ll marry me, please?”
Branches cracked as the horses shifted where they were tied. The hay bag rustled as one of the horses wrestled more alfalfa from the net. My nose felt like an ice cube, but my cheeks burned like an inferno. Seconds stretched out as if time and urgency had started a tug-of-war match. Each one felt the need to prevail, but there I was, stuck in the eternity of the moment with Fitz watching me, expectant, concerned, and once more desperate.
“If we had more time,” Fitz pressed on, “we would date for a year or two. We would spend time getting to know each other all over again, but time,” his face pulled in pain, “isn’t something I have any longer. And really, I don’t have to look any further than you. You are the perfect woman for me.”
“So says the prince who has dated fourteen women in the last month.” I pressed my lips together, caught somewhere between talking him out of this and blurting out: Yes, of course I’ll marry you. But I couldn’t act impulsively, not for a choice like this one.
“But that’s it, don’t you see?” Fitz pulled closer still. “Everything I saw in them, every attribute that caught my eye in all the other contestants, you have it all in spades.” A shaky smile took hold for a moment. “You are fiercely intelligent like Blair. You are incredibly beautiful, more so than Esmerey could ever hope to be. There is more kindness in your heart than even Sadira and her gentle ways.” His lips trembled slightly. “And you are a truer friend than Gwendolyn and all my other friends combined. You are the perfect woman for me and dating you for another year or two would only deepen my conviction on the subject, so why not cut to the happily ever after now?”
“Because of what you’re giving up,” I answered, unwilling to concede.
“Only if they won’t accept you. It very well may be that they will agree to my terms and then you’ll—”
“Be queen to a country where I don’t belong?”
“A country where they love you.” He let go of my hand to run his knuckle along my jaw. “They love you because I love you.”
I closed my eyes. Desire to accept perched on the edge of my tongue. I did love him and I had grown to love Nolcovia. Would it be so awful to agree?
“But if you married Sadie, you could—”
“Fall victim to another arranged marriage? End up like my parents, with a wife counting down the moments until my demise? Undermining my every move so that she can usurp the throne?” Anger flickered in his features. “I’ve seen the reality of their love, something I thought was real, but it was a game to her, a chance to find her way to power.”
“You know Sadie wouldn’t be like that,” I chastised him. “She’s too kind.”
“That may be so, and I even may come to love her one day,” his finger hooked under my chin and pressure urged me closer to him, “but she will never be to me what you are. You will always have my heart.” His lips brushed against mine, slow at first, then the kiss became more fervent. Capturing me in his spell, I leaned into him, relishing the way he made the love in my heart blossom and spread through all my limbs with the warmth of the sun. “I love you, Coco,” he whispered against my lips.